Contingent employment in Europe and the United States

Book abstract:

The labour market is littered with a variety of employment relationships ranging from self-employment through fixed-term contracts, zero rated contracts to short term agency work. These are described under the title Contingent Employment. Perhaps not surprisingly the spawning of these multifaceted relationships has been accompanied by a similar growth in legislative activity, particularly so over the last decade.

This work examines the growth of contingent employment in several advanced economies and seeks to measure the impact of labour market regulation and institutional frameworks. The book is organised over nine chapters including an introductory chapter which provides the background, methodology and framework of the research which supports the text. The discussion then moves in chapter two to the nature of contingent employment and the social spin-offs from this type of employment. The following six chapters are given over to national comparisons with chapters on the UK, Sweden, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. Chapter nine draws from those chapters two salient features: first the variety of practice in the use of contingent employment in the different countries, and then the nature and structure of statutory regulations with particular emphasis on the comparison of Europe with the United States.

The work will interest scholars, students, practitioners and policy makers engaged in the fields of labour economics and management, and labour markets.

Ola Bergström is Assistant Professor in Business Administration, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Sweden.

Donald Storrie is Senior Lecturer in Economics and Social Policy and Director of the Centre for European Labour Market Studies (CELMS), School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Sweden.